David and River flopped down next to the campfire. They were the responsible adults of this camping trip and, like proper responsible adults, they had started a fire and given the important task of setting up the tents to the seven youth with them. A slightly smaller tent for River and the three girls, and a slightly larger one for David and the four boys. As long as no one poked an eye out with the tent poles, they were content to let them get on with it. They had also given the important task of checking out the immediate area to David's Skiploom, Tuft, and River's Marill, Bubbles. Delegation complete, the only job left they had to do was warming their feet by the fire.
"Ow!" A young, male voice called out.
Both adults whipped their heads around, but Jeff, lanky and slightly clumsy with the onset of puberty, had only walked backwards into a tree. He was fine.
"Watch where you're walking." David told them all with a small sigh.
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, Mr. Larson."
"Yes, sir."
"Aw, but I don't want to." Max whined at the end.
"But you have to." David told him with a grin.
"Oh fine, then."
The boys continued feeding the poles into their slots, with a little more self awareness than they'd been using before. The girls however, already had their poles in place, and were shuffling the tent around so that the door faced the fire, instead of the trees.
"Did you check underneath for rocks and branches and things?" River asked the three girls.
She was sleeping in that thing as well, so even if the girls could sleep on a bed full of lumps and bumps, she wasn't going to.
"Yes, Mrs. Larson." Zoe, Vivian, and Sarah replied simultaneously, a trick they had perfected on the hike up there, much to everyone else's annoyance.
River wanted to tell them not to do the synchronized thing anymore, it had lost all entertainment value hours ago, but it was encouraging them to bond, which was the whole point of the camping trip. She let them go with a sigh instead, and would have been hard pressed to miss the giggles that erupted when she did so.
It should probably be mentioned at this point that while David and River were married, it was not to each other. River was married to David's younger brother, Mitch, and David was married to a woman unrelated to River, called Ruth. All four of them, however, as well as several other adults, ran the local youth group. David and River were merely the only ones willing to take some of the kids camping in the wilderness.
Little did the group of campers know, that they were being watched. They had stumbled into the territory of a pack of sneazle. This in itself wasn't much to worry about, the entire mountain range was full of overlapping sneazle territories, as well as lickitung territories, tangela trails, poliwhirl nests, and heracross trees, but this particular sneazle pack happened to be close enough to notice the humans that had wandered in.
"So, if we chase them out, they'll set us on fire?" A small sneazle quietly asked the rest of the pack as they looked down on the campers from in the trees, this having been the first time he'd ever seen humans.
"Right." The boss confirmed "See the little patch of it in the middle of their pack? They let it grow and then the whole forest's alight."
"That seems like a bit much effort..."
"It is, and will likely kill our neighbours and scare off the food, as well. If you're done looking, kit, then we'll move on."
The boss led the way through the tree branches, towards the river full of spawning goldeen.
The small sneazle, who wasn't really a kit anymore but wasn't about to argue with the boss on his first ever hunting trip, hunched down until everyone of higher status than him was past, then tagged along with the rest of that year's kits, at the back of the pack.
"I can't believe the boss answered your question." Another small sneazle whispered to him in awe.
"I can't believe he didn't knock me out the tree to shut me up." He whispered back.
The rest of the group of younglings nodded in agreement; that's certainly what they had expected to happen.
The smallest of their group, a runt who had surprised everyone by surviving the summer, sped up a little to reach the first sneazle in front of them, one of the kits from last year.
"Big sister, could the humans find our den?" She asked quietly
The older sneazle, who wasn't her sister, older or otherwise, but it was a friendly, yet respectful title, replied, "I doubt it. Usually they leave after a day or so, but we'll check them out after the sun sets."
"Won't they attack us?"
"The humans? No, they go blind as soon as the sun goes down." She scoffed
"Thank you, big sister."
The runt fell back to her year mates.
"They can't see in the dark, so we're gonna check them out when they fall asleep, and they should be gone in a few days." She explained.
She wasn't the strongest, or the fastest, so she had to find other ways to be useful.
"I don't wanna be set on fire, though."
"Me neither."
"But if they're asleep, then they can't, right?"
"They set the ground on fire, and that'll keep burning on its own."
"But the boss was talking as though they do that all the time, and it can't hurt us unless we get close."
"If we're gonna burn and die, I wanna die on a full stomach. Where are we going?"
"Fishing, the river's full of goldeen." This was from the sneazle in their group who was the strongest, and fastest of that year's kits; he'd been hunting a couple times already.
"I like goldeen, they're already sliced up inside-"
"Silence!" The boss snapped.
They had arrived at the river and, even in the dim light, the goldeen scales shone in the water.
"Everyone take their usual spots." The boss ordered. "Big Kit, find somewhere out of everyone's way and stay out the currents."
"I'm not a kit anymore." He whispered, but very quietly, because he was finally allowed to hunt instead of watch.
"The rest of you kits, watch from the trees. Watch the goldeen, watch the currents, and watch us. Watch, and most importantly, learn." The boss continued.
The sneazle in the trees grumbled to each other as the rest descended towards the river, partially about their lack of participation, but mostly about how they weren't kits anymore. They were ignored, every sneazle had done the same thing at one point.
They didn't leave the river until every sneazle had eaten his or her fill, even the youngsters in the trees. They left the riverside with half eaten goldeen bodies strewn all over the place, maybe they would be an easy meal when they went back later that night, but probably not. There was always something prowling around, looking for an easy meal, including other sneazle. The idea of food being wasted was very much a human idea; in the wilderness, everything was eaten by something else, and even if it wasn't, it would eventually rot down and fertilize the trees.
On their way back to their den, they made a point to swing back through the human camp. There were no humans to be seen, though they could all hear them snoring in their strange, yellow, flappy hills. More importantly, the fire was gone, and they were all fed. A fed sneazle was a curious sneazle, which was a much nicer sneazle to be around than a hungry sneazle.
The entire pack spread out around the camp, checking everything out as they went. They were being noisy for sneazle, but these were humans; as well as being night blind, they were also half deaf at any time of the day or night.
"What's these things?"
"Humans sit on them." An older sneazle replied.
This kind of questioning happened every time young sneazle saw their first human camp.
"What's these weird black vines?"
"The humans plant them and they grow very quickly, attaching to everything in sight. They chop out the rootball, and usually all the vines too, when they leave."
"Sometimes there's blue ones, too." Another sneazle added.
"This is snow coloured, but its soft and not cold."
"Humans put their feet in them."
"What's wrong with their feet?"
"No idea."
"What's these mushroom things behind the reflect?"
"That's not a reflect, it's a human thing. Some of them get left behind, but there's nothing getting ready to attack us."
"What about these weird mushrooms? They're the wrong shape and feel wrong."
"What weird mushrooms?"
The entire pack gathered around the youngster with the bag of wrongly-shaped mushrooms.
The sneazles knew mushrooms, they ate them, a lot. There were two basic kinds: the ones that grew flat out of the sides of trees, and the ones that grew up from the ground. These mushrooms looked like the ones that grow out of the ground, except that they were flat on each end, had no stalk, and no ribbing underneath. They didn't even have an underneath. If the sneazles had had an education that included things like geometry, instead of merely how to thrive in a forest at sub-freezing temperatures without hibernating, they would have appreciated having the word 'cylinder' added to their vocabulary, but unfortunately, they didn't.
One sneazle cut through the plastic bag with a long claw, and half the mushrooms fell out and rolled among the gathered sneazle. They were quickly grabbed up, and the youngster holding the bag was quick to snatch one and drop the rest before there were none left for him. He backed up from the brewing scuffles, not wanting his own mushroom to be stolen.
He was quickly surrounded by the rest of the youngsters. Even as a group, they had no hope of getting a mushroom out of the free-for-all, but they could defend one mushroom from one, or even two, adults. It meant that he would have to share his prize, but that was fine, he was used to sharing with his year-mates. At any rate, part of a strange mushroom was better than none of a strange mushroom, assuming that the were edible, of course.
The group shuffled their way into a tree, hiding their mushroom from the adults, before it was snatched out of his paws by the big kit, who then leaped up the branches, hissing at the rest of them to hurry up. They all scrambled up to near the top of the tree, invisible to the squabbling adults below them, and settled on a few closely clumped branches. The mushroom was poked, prodded, sniffed, and eventually ripped to shreds as each one wanted a piece for individual investigation. Even the runt managed to get a scrap.
Eventually, one of them ate its piece.
"Blegh!" He exclaimed, to everyone's surprise.
"Is it bitter?" Was the much voiced question, a bitter taste usually indicating toxicity.
"Sweet." He replied. "Far too sweet."
How could something be too sweet? They liked sweet things! Berries were sweet, and berries were delicious!
"Ew!" Another sneazle tried it's piece of mushroom, curious of the idea of something being too sweet.
"Gross!"
"Ick!"
About half the sneazle ended up eating their bits of mushroom, with the rest tossing them away, not interested in a food that apparently didn't even taste nice.
They ambled back down their tree, meeting the adults half way down as they were climbing up. Without a word, the adults headed off, back towards the den, and the younglings obediently followed behind them. They did manage to get a glimpse, however, of the remains of the camp below. The adults had made rather a mess, and there were quite a few of the mushrooms strewn around, and the youngsters felt better about not liking them themselves.
The sneasel quickly arrived at their den, and settled in for a nap and some games while they digested their meal. They made several trips to the river before the sun rose again, and when it did, then weren't particularly surprised to note that the humans hadn't reappeared in their camp. Humans were notoriously lazy.
When the campers did eventually get out of bed, several hours after dawn, they were horrified to find the condition of their camp. Half the guy ropes were cut, their camping chairs were slashed, and a bag of marshmallows had been cut open and most of them were missing, along with a number of shoes kept outside the tents for more room inside. Obviously, some rampaging pokemon had charged through, possibly an angry ursaring, or even a herd of donphan. It was a wonder that they'd slept through it, but it was for the best, as this way, none of them had been attacked. It was common knowledge that most wild pokemon didn't understand that a tent wall was quite flimsy and easy to cut through, so inside was the safest place to be.
Dave and River gave the campers a stern lecture about leaving food outside so as to not attract wild pokemon, and started packing up the camp. They still had several days more on this trip, but they wanted to finish it far away from whatever savage pokemon had trashed their camp last night.